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New Legislation Would Crack Down On Online Criminal Havens
Hugh Pickens writes "The Hill reports that Senators Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) have introduced a bill that would penalize foreign countries that fail to crack down on cyber criminals operating within their borders. Under the bill the White House would have the responsibility of identifying countries that pose cyber threats and the president would have to present to Congress in an annual report. Countries identified as 'hacker havens' would then have to develop plans of action to combat cybercrimes or risk cuts to their US export dollars, foreign-direct investment funds and trade assistance grants. Numerous American employers, including Cisco, HP, Microsoft, Symantec, PayPal, eBay, McAfee, American Express, Mastercard and Visa, as well as Facebook, are supporting the Senators' legislation."
This legislation is just going to blow up in our face as soon as other countries start demanding that we rat out our citizens for "criminal" activity (e.g. dissent, political freedom, etc.)
Wow. "Obey our laws or else!" Imperialist America strikes again!
And by Cyber-Threats, they mean that they fail to encforce the DMCA.
"Gee, I feel safer already" A lot of huff and puff, and not much else.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
As shown with the Special 301 list which stated the Canada was needing to update copyright laws (which could label Canada a criminal haven since it doesn't have a DMCA). After it was issued about Canada being in the wrong, many companies publicly stated otherwise.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
This is pointless legislation because they very country it's targeting (*coughpeople'srepubliccough*), we refuse to recognize for their already existing undeclared "warfare" against the US, such as their currency manipulation.
"Cyber warfare" will just be one more thing we ignore for economic/political reasons.
News flash, long time copy/pasta troll accidentally
posts logged in and reveals his uid.
Given that it is ethanol, no-one was surprised, he's known as atroll anyway.
AC to not undo richly deserved downmod.
Just like child porn, cybercrime is another excuse to go after their real goal: Dictate who does what on the web. Soon after, they'll say file sharing is cybercrime, and they will twist another country's arm to impose their ACTA crap.
But as a non-american I really really really DO NOT want US laws. If I would, I would move to the US. The arrogance is striking. Btw, ca
so will the WTO give Antigua even more free IP over this as the US may try to push the Online gambling ban?
Scads of cyber criminals and spies here in the good ole USA? Say it ain't so!
What's the bet the most immediate target is Spain, for the cyber-crime of not enforcing US copyright law?
*runs*
Or, in the style of The Onion, "Area man accidentally outs himself as copy/pasta troll".
Are we likely to see legislation against tax havens that allow people to secrete money away from legitimate taxation and policing enquiries?
Oh silly me - that's where the politicians and their rich friends put their money...
So, would America end up penalizing itself?
So apparently, if you add up all of Europe we'd match the US as the largest source of cybercrime. But the hypocrisy aside, Europe won't be the target of US sanctions.
It's a roll call of supporters that stand to lose the most from foreign "hackers" that don't conform to their EULA doctrine. Great idea, lets police other countries even more and spread real law enforcement dollars even more thin while enforcing patient right of companies so they can make their bottom lines a little more appealing. This is what happens when you have analysis's that do the "we are potentially losing X amount of dollars because of pirating and hacking".
This is a future backdoor for enforcing upcoming ACTA, and for cracking down on file sharing/other perceived piracy/copyright infringements. And ultimately for imposing global internet censorship (controls on perceived indecent or perceived dangerous content).
This isn't about hacker havens or real bad guys. Lobbyists aren't handling billions of bucks wanting representatives to shut down 'hacker havens'.
The big bucks are coming down from the **AA
Not that stopping crime is a bad thing. But this sort of thing is going to be abused going forward.
It's contrary to free trade. And while the current intent may be great, the future consequences could be dire, if some agreement can't be reached early to limit its scope.
like i knew orrin, you'd wonder if this is really his way of setting up draconian ip enforcement for his hollywood pals' he's never been able to do otherwise. is it a secret hatch to hollywood?
i bet all the people defending this, and the general foreign policy of acting like the cops of the world, would be outraged at the thought of having to follow canadian, french, russian, ect. law. They would probably call for a military strike of London if the shoe was on the other foot. Fucking hypocrites.
You see, we have several technology darlings here in the US that like to make software that's hopelessly insecure. Sure, more secure software like Unix and its derivatives were invented here too, but we don't like them because they have command lines, and command lines are icky.
So because we can't be bothered to run software that's reasonably able to do e-commerce in an e-commerce era, we need a goat. It's best if that's a foreign goat. We're going to point our fingers at the foreign hackers and say that they are the ones hampering our eBay and our Amazon and our banking websites.
Because requiring secure clients to do e-commerce would be too hard. Nobody here would go for it.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Threaten anyone and every one to fall in line like the tyrants citizen citizens and encroach on others sovereignty.
Sounds an awful lot like you're talking about China there except for the last gasp and dying empire parts.
This is nothing but a attempt to limit free speech on the internet. We figured out that cyberwar bullshit is a good enough reason to make developing countries filter, monitor, and log web access, basically set up their own little great firewall or lose US funding i.e. starve to death. This bill has little to do with hackers it's mainly to suppress the oppressed and enforce globalism. Free speech in developing countries is dangerous to the corporations exploiting them such as the ones backing this serious human rights abuse.
Numerous American employers, including Cisco, HP, Microsoft, Symantec, PayPal, eBay, McAfee, American Express, Mastercard and Visa, as well as Facebook, are supporting the Senators' legislation."
What, no Disney? No Sony? No RIAA and MPAA members? Did the others tell them to hide in the back and not to come out until the law is passed?
I'm all for going after the spammers and shit, but I sure as hell don't trust the US Gov't to use a very narrow definition of "cyber criminal" when big media pull out their cheque books.
Loose lips lose spit.
According to that site you gave, 23% of cybercrimes are from within the US. That means that 87% comes from outside of the US.
So, by doing this, the US is trying to attack that 87% which is, by far, the majority. It only makes sense, don't you think?
Just 'cause something has the potential to be abused you can't assume it will.
It seems to me that any measure the US takes in order to fix this or that is seen by slashdoters as evil incarnated trying to destroy our god-given free speech.
Just for a second get the free-speech crap out of your head and don't assume this measure will be abused. Then ask yourselves: will this work? If you come up with an answer while in that state of mind, fine, but until then keep all your "evil US is censoring me!" crap to yourselves or at least accept the fact that you're just ranting because it comes from the makers of the RIAA.
But the point is that according to those numbers, the major non-US sources of cybercrime are also your major trading partners and close allies. I don't think the US will be rushing to attack any of them with sanctions. Instead you'll be attacking or threatening the usual suspects, which puts on a good show but has little actual effect.
According to that site you gave, 23% of cybercrimes are from within the US. That means that 87% comes from outside of the US. So, by doing this, the US is trying to attack that 87% which is, by far, the majority. It only makes sense, don't you think?
And by 87% I mean 77%, of course.
The USA has the right to not give aid and to not trade with certain countries. Either way, this is going to be used to force IP laws globally. The funny thing about cyber war, is that it is called a war. We have nuclear weapons and the potential to destroy each other. Does that mean we're at nuclear war? What we are seeing is cyber espionage and preparations for cyber warfare. The only way this can be fought is if the world largely stands against the American government. The American people need to also stand against their government, which is clearly no longer representing them or acting in their best interests.
'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung
Considering the economic climate, why can't we find Senators who will simply eliminate US export dollars, foreign-direct investment funds and trade assistance grants categorically? Why should our government be sending our tax dollars outside the country anyway?
The US still acting as the world's cop ? This is a thought model of the Bush era. Aged and provenly not working, that is.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
I'd like to see "Don't click on that .exe attachment" PSA's on TV.
Sounds an awful lot like you're talking about China there except for the last gasp and dying empire parts.
Sounds more like someone has taken lessons from *AA?
~men are from earth. women are from earth. deal with it.~
So, does that mean that we will not IMPORT from them? If so, Canada, Russia, North Korea, South Korea and AMERICA are the biggest.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The solution would be more resiliant systems because there will be a time when those bugs, holes and security issues, both technical and social, will be used by foreign governments. Going after the small people like carders etc is not the answer to the real problem, complete lack of any security responsibility from the various vendors.
Im actually grateful that "cyber criminals" exist because without them it security would be if possible even worse than today.
HTTP/1.1 400
I see a lot of people going off on a tangent about this proposed Bill and how it might help the RIAA/MPAA, but it seems to be designed to get a handle on the blatant (possibly state sanctioned) cyber attacks from countries such as China.
Right now, there isn't any actual internationally accepted law surrounding Cyber Warfare. In other words, there is no consensus about what kind of cyber attack crosses the line to such an extent that it becomes an act of war. A large problem with cyber attacks is attribution. Not knowing who really attacked you limits your options in terms of a proportional response, and this is a big issue for policymakers everywhere. Essentially it has caused most governments to (at best) apply a strictly passive defense to their critical infrastructure, instead of an immediate offensive response (ie. packetting whoever is attacking you).
In the physical world an invading force would immediately be met with physical violence and quite possibly international outrage towards the offending party, acting (in most cases) as a deterrent. Right now, there is no such deterrent in the arena of Cyber Warfare and countries such as China seem to be actively exploiting that. They know that even IF they get caught, they can simply deny government involvement and blame it on non-state actors. Of course, those "non-state actors" are never actually brought to justice, making the whole exercise futile.
It seems to me that this Bill is designed to counter this problem by imposing sanctions against countries who either engage in Cyber Warfare or harbor those convenient "non-state actors", and as such seems a sane step forward.
Of course, one can only hope that such a Bill would not be abused by the **AA.
"Sarcasm is for *winners*, Alan." - Charlie Harper (Two and a Half Men)
When you point a finger at someone else, three are pointing back at you.
US Federal Guvmint - ACTA, DMCA, NSA wiretaps, full laundry list available online.
Cisco - Great Firewall of China, 'nuff said.
Visa/Mastercard/Amex - Insecure data practices while raping their customers with fees.
Facebook - In bed with Zynga, whose CEO has admitted he's a scammer and that his games are rife with malware.
Google - Censorship in China (until they got pwned).
Microsoft - No comment needed (with a CEO that looks like Satan, it's not really necessary).
The only reason the *AAs aren't jumping on the bandwagon at this point is that they'd bring to stench of their bad PR all over this legislation and alert the public to what's it's really all about.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
The US only gives aid to countries who are in extreme need anyway like Haiti.
Yes, it's nice to know that the US ONLY gives aid to countries in extreme need.
It's also nice to know that you probably represent the average US citizen, ie. full of shit. ABS used to mean something here in Canada before "anti-lock braking system" was invented... we're used to your type.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
http://maliciousnetworks.org/top20c.php Who is the number one haven for malicious machines? The US. Not that I disagree with this. I do think it is a step in the right direction. We need to start working together as a world to combat threats on the Internet. If it takes cutting off funding, then I am for it. I would like to see if go further and have the companies who are "supporting" this to agree to NOT send work to these countries. The reason cheap labor exists in a lot of these countries is due to the lack of regulations.
I expect an anti-Linux section to be hidden in the bill to be exploited after passing.
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
Quoting from that chart....
Each country lists 6 contributing factors, share of malicious computer activity, malicious code rank, spam zombies rank, phishing web site hosts rank, bot rank and attack origin, to substantiate its cybercrime ranking.
So in otherwords being a victim-- having a hijacked computer-- gets you ranked up on that chart. Thats real clever. I thought the point of all this was C&C servers that the ISPs refused to disconnect, not mom and pop having a zombified computer that they are unaware of?
We're going to replace you with a giant red and blue flasher, and a pair of sirens!
Yet another boneheaded attempt at forcing our views/policies/laws/etc onto other countries. It makes me reminisce of the grade school playground antics from my youth. "If you're not with us, you're against us" comes to mind as well...
Who was that pointy-eared bastard?
I was talking about the buying of our debt.
Quoting from that chart.... Each country lists 6 contributing factors, share of malicious computer activity, malicious code rank, spam zombies rank, phishing web site hosts rank, bot rank and attack origin, to substantiate its cybercrime ranking. So in otherwords being a victim-- having a hijacked computer-- gets you ranked up on that chart. Thats real clever. I thought the point of all this was C&C servers that the ISPs refused to disconnect, not mom and pop having a zombified computer that they are unaware of?
I noticed, but I think it'd be hard to separate victims and origins. Even C&C servers are hosted on legitimate sites without the owners knowing it. Last year a Google newsgroup was found to be used as a C&C implementation.
The article doesn't elaborate on what they mean by "attack origin".
This legislation is primarily focused at killing Wikileaks. The rest is just a smokescreen.